963 replies to this topic

[Stinger]

Kind of old, but I don't believe this has been posted.

The movement and reload animations are not up to par with Infinity Ward's.

The guns, however, do seem to have more recoil, which is a good thing. Camo skins in SP and attachments would suggest that there will be varying textures and attachments in MP - although this is not confirmed, I think it is a given.

[Camille]

it is indeed a bit painful to see these clunky and robotic animations next to MW's smoother anims.

i'm loving the fact that they're doing different stuff though.

[Chyros]

Unfortunately none of the core problems seem to be going to fixed. Vahn, the MP design director, even confirmed there will be damageviewkick in the game. Which is more than half of the reason why balance sucked so badly in MW2 D: (the rest was lack of recoil and idling, and the explosives were a different case altogether).

Edited by Chyros, 07 July 2010 - 13:58.

[Stinger]

I'm assuming the Black Bird pilot is almost at zero gravity so you can forgive the languidness of his hands.

At 2:41 it's hard to forgive those trudging animations, though. And wow, that guy falls so fast when he is killed. It reminds me of the air being let out of a balloon. :S

[Chyros]

The AUG reload looks very clunky and robotic, not visually impressive at all. And yeah, it's minor, but did they HAVE to use the same sniper scope reticle again? Really? It's been on since CoD 2 iirc, I'm sick of it now and it never looked good to begin with.

[Kalo]

Chyros, on 7 Jul 2010, 14:51, said:

Unfortunately none of the core problems seem to be going to fixed. Vahn, the MP design director, even confirmed there will be damageviewkick in the game. Which is more than half of the reason why balance sucked so badly in MW2 D: (the rest was lack of recoil and idling, and the explosives were a different case altogether).

How is that really a problem? And how does it affect balance, exactly?

[Chyros]

Kalo, on 8 Jul 2010, 4:44, said:

Chyros, on 7 Jul 2010, 14:51, said:

Unfortunately none of the core problems seem to be going to fixed. Vahn, the MP design director, even confirmed there will be damageviewkick in the game. Which is more than half of the reason why balance sucked so badly in MW2 D: (the rest was lack of recoil and idling, and the explosives were a different case altogether).

How is that really a problem? And how does it affect balance, exactly?

For those not in the know, this is the viewkick ("recoil") you experience when being shot at. This was purely visual in CoD 4, where you screen would shift away, but your weapon would remain on target at all times, so for all intents and purposes there was no damageviewkick in CoD 4. In MW2, the effect consisted of vertical or horizontal recoil that literally pulled your iron sights off target. This effect is the single biggest factor for why the weapon balance is so terrible in MW2, since no-recoil weapons such as the ACR that have automatic fire beat everything, as the opponent can never aim back. Because of this, the most important factor for any weapon in MW2 is recoil. The less recoil, the better the weapon is.

A similar effect holds true for explosives, which is partly responsible for the overpoweredness of for example noobtubes and rockets (the most substantial effect is of course their ridiculous killing radius, but still this is not an unimportant factor). This effect is called "shock" and it is what makes your screen shake all over if an explosive is detonated near you. This makes aiming all but impossible for up to two seconds which is enough to reload your explosive in.

Both damageviewkick and shock are variables introduced because of realism and not because they improved gameplay. Thinking too shallowly, IW managed to all but completely break balance with just these two effects. With explosives that don't have a ridiculously huge killing radius or cause a disproportionate amount of shock, and bullets that don't cause damageviewkick, the game would be a lot better balanced.

The damage disorientation is a similar effect that highly discourages skilled play. This consists of, in MW2, a bloody screen that obscures almost everything (in contrast to just a red edge in CoD 4), as well as a deafening effect and a vision/motion blur visual effect. In other words, whoever gets hit first can't see or hear anything, making skilled counters almost impossible.

[deltaepsilon]

Chyros, on 8 Jul 2010, 16:17, said:

In other words, whoever gets hit first can't see or hear anything, making skilled counters almost impossible.

What, like RL

[Wizard]

I'm with Chyros on this. Damage View Kick is bloody annoying and removes a little skill from the game, making it almost impossible to counter anyone who attacks first. Without it you may get the upper hand on a lower skilled opponent if he can't finish you off. I see the logic in it, but would prefer to be able to combat an opponent, rather than constantly have to perform bunny-hop-spins all the time to make sure I am not jumped on 24/7 in game and/or just shoot him first. A game isn't RL, there should be skill in it, not he-who-shoots-first-wins.

[Chyros]

deltaepsilon, on 8 Jul 2010, 8:37, said:

Chyros, on 8 Jul 2010, 16:17, said:

In other words, whoever gets hit first can't see or hear anything, making skilled counters almost impossible.

What, like RL

Yeah, like RL, and RL sucks in games.

Worst though is that it unbalances the weapons because auto weapons with less recoil get to harness the power of DVK. Why use a 1-hit-kill weapon when 5 hits will kill them just as easily without other hassle like bolt-action etc.?

Edited by Chyros, 08 July 2010 - 08:54.

[Pav:3d]

Yeah Damage view kick has got to be one of the shitiest additions ever, what were they thinking

[Chyros]

Well I managed to rally lots of people on the Treyarch forum but their chief MP designer Vahn told me it'll still be in. So weapon balance will suck. His reply was:

Quote

Most competitive players we met never want anything that other players can do to impact what they can do. They turn off (or want to turn off if they could) rumble, shock and damage viewkick.

We understand this.

But stuff life this is best left to the competitive circuit and custom games. Removing these things would create a fairly stale and lifeless environment to play in for everyone else.

If we took out damage viewkick, we would get feedback from other players about how they didn't know they are being shot, or how the game doesn't feel realistic and/or feels too arcady.

David 'Vahn' Vonderhaar

I don't think anybody would call a game without DVK "lifeless" or "stale"; I don't think CoD 4 was ever called that either, and because weapon balance becomes so bland and recoil such a tremendously dominating factor that I'd actually call it a lot more stale with it IN.

Read between the lines though. Obviously they want to make BO a complete noob game again by dumbing it down completely. Yay Treyarch.

[Wizard]

Chyros, on 8 Jul 2010, 14:47, said:

Obviously they want to make BO a complete noob game again by dumbing it down completely. Yay IW

Fix'd

Oh wait.... shit....

Edited by Wizard, 08 July 2010 - 13:49.

[Ghostrider]

Chyros, on 8 Jul 2010, 9:47, said:

Well I managed to rally lots of people on the Treyarch forum but their chief MP designer Vahn told me it'll still be in. So weapon balance will suck. His reply was:

Quote

Most competitive players we met never want anything that other players can do to impact what they can do. They turn off (or want to turn off if they could) rumble, shock and damage viewkick.

We understand this.

But stuff life this is best left to the competitive circuit and custom games. Removing these things would create a fairly stale and lifeless environment to play in for everyone else.

If we took out damage viewkick, we would get feedback from other players about how they didn't know they are being shot, or how the game doesn't feel realistic and/or feels too arcady.

David 'Vahn' Vonderhaar

I don't think anybody would call a game without DVK "lifeless" or "stale"; I don't think CoD 4 was ever called that either, and because weapon balance becomes so bland and recoil such a tremendously dominating factor that I'd actually call it a lot more stale with it IN.

Read between the lines though. Obviously they want to make BO a complete noob game again by dumbing it down completely. Yay Treyarch.

Wow, interesting read there Chyros. It'd be nicer if they at least had an option to turn off viewkick, I don't think it'd be that hard to put in the game. That would also allow for "competitive circuit and custom games", as Treyarch claims.

[Wizard]

That would be appealing to proper gamers Ghost and all the game developers signed some sort of contract about 4 years ago to not do that anymore.

[Kalo]

Chyros, on 8 Jul 2010, 8:51, said:

deltaepsilon, on 8 Jul 2010, 8:37, said:

Chyros, on 8 Jul 2010, 16:17, said:

In other words, whoever gets hit first can't see or hear anything, making skilled counters almost impossible.

What, like RL

Yeah, like RL, and RL sucks in games.

I don't know about that, Project Reality is pretty fantastic. But I really can't speak too much on balance for the CoD series, since it's not my kind of game. So I'll just back out here.

[Chyros]

Stinger, on 7 Jul 2010, 15:15, said:

The guns, however, do seem to have more recoil, which is a good thing.

Meh, you can't tell that from this vid. MP and SP weapons have a separate sheet of variables, and invariably, the SP weapons have always had more recoil than the MP ones.

[Stinger]

More Black Ops info.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=6IvvmtQ_FVg

I noticed at 1:06 that they changed the model for the guy with the knife in the tunnel.

You can see the original at 0:46 below:

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=N4A9BuZWeuQ

The process they use to capture motion looks incredible. There's no excuse for bad animations when you have this technology at your disposal.

Edited by Stinger, 20 July 2010 - 21:45.

[Wizard]

There are good things and bad things that come out of that video. Firstly I am horrified by the poor visual appeal of the game so far. Just because it's Cold War era, they don't need Cold War graphics. MW2 set the standard for spectacular visuals, this looks like a step backwards. I agree with you Stinger, that the capture technology should produce better animations. They just look poor now.

On the plus side, I like the positive ideas of ammunition and weapon customization. Will be interesting to see how they customize an Assault Rifle, beyond anything visual, unless you can tape your other mag upside down to the loaded one in a cliched fashion. Although I suspect that the ammo will just be CoD:BO version of FMJ from MW2.

I had to chuckle at the part where they were talking about giving us something new and the best they can reveal is flying a heli... OMFG ... do they have their finger on the pulse or what

Oh and was it me, but did the M1 in the helipad scene have zero recoil???

[Kalo]

I am seriously pondering my choice on to buy this or not, truthfully, I like Treyarch (I must be the first one to say that ever ) and this really looks interesting. But I agree with EVERYONE on the animations so far, wtf?

[Chyros]

Stinger, on 20 Jul 2010, 20:12, said:

The process they use to capture motion looks incredible. There's no excuse for bad animations when you have this technology at your disposal.

It gets worse - the player model's animation for the M203 is ripped directly from CoD 4 and MW2, but the gun's animation isn't so the M203's reload doesn't correspond to it. The M203 slides forward very steadily, in trademark robotic Treyarch style, while the FP player model obviously jerks the thing suddenly. It's stupid mistakes like this that mess up their animations, and because their animations use overly fond vector physics everything looks like it progresses at a constant speed and therefore robotic.

Wizard, on 20 Jul 2010, 20:40, said:

There are good things and bad things that come out of that video. Firstly I am horrified by the poor visual appeal of the game so far. Just because it's Cold War era, they don't need Cold War graphics. MW2 set the standard for spectacular visuals, this looks like a step backwards. I agree with you Stinger, that the capture technology should produce better animations. They just look poor now.

I agree as well. Gameplay is the most important part of a game of course, but there's no excuse for bad animations (especially reloads *does some kind of reload of something*).

Quote

On the plus side, I like the positive ideas of ammunition and weapon customization. Will be interesting to see how they customize an Assault Rifle, beyond anything visual, unless you can tape your other mag upside down to the loaded one in a cliched fashion. Although I suspect that the ammo will just be CoD:BO version of FMJ from MW2.

I wouldn't expect too much tbh, but the ammo was revealed partially in the form of Dragon's Breath ammo for the SPAS-12, a pyrophoric type of ammunition.

Quote

I had to chuckle at the part where they were talking about giving us something new and the best they can reveal is flying a heli... OMFG ... do they have their finger on the pulse or what

Tbh, I wouldn't hold my hope for whatever campaign they make. Treyarch have shown they are experts in making spectacularly unspectacular campaigns so far.

Quote

Oh and was it me, but did the M1 in the helipad scene have zero recoil???

Was there an M1 in? I can't remember. Apparently, from what I overheard somewhere, Treyarch will put in recoil though... "for the PC". On consoles recoil of course messes up the game too much, because it doesn't work with aim assist. The protests against lack of recoil have been so much though that I can't imagine even Treyarch not putting in any.

Kalo, on 21 Jul 2010, 2:16, said:

I am seriously pondering my choice on to buy this or not, truthfully, I like Treyarch (I must be the first one to say that ever ) and this really looks interesting. But I agree with EVERYONE on the animations so far, wtf?

They still have to come up with ANYTHING to show that really makes me want to play the game so far. I want nothing more than for the game to become great and maximally awesome and stuff, but for FPS history to hit a new benchmark with TREYARCH is going to be a challenge, I'd say .

[Stinger]

Infinity Ward have us spoiled with their reload animations. No one in the business does it better.

When I played WaW again about a week ago I found the animations to be "robotic", as Chyros put it. The movement animations look even worse than those in Modern Warfare. In fact, they look like they reused animations from Call of Duty 2. :S

[Chyros]

Stinger, on 31 Jul 2010, 22:55, said:

Infinity Ward have us spoiled with their reload animations. No one in the business does it better.

I agree. For all the hatred I bear them, animations IW have always been unparallelled in. I wonder if the animator responsible for that is now in Sledgehammer or Respawn.

Quote

When I played WaW again about a week ago I found the animations to be "robotic", as Chyros put it. The movement animations look even worse than those in Modern Warfare. In fact, they look like they reused animations from Call of Duty 2. :S

WaW's animations were generally somewhat terrible, yeah. The only one I really liked from that was the WaW Garand partial reload, which was awesome . Mismatched, but awesome. Others were quite bad.

Edited by Chyros, 31 July 2010 - 21:08.

[Stinger]

According to the video below, made by PC Gamer, all of the animators are still present at Infinity Ward, with the exception of the leads.



This was made back in April and more may have left since then.

I really hate seeing what became of this company - it's almost heart-rending. So much talent under one roof, and it was destroyed by the avarice of man. I wonder who was to really blame for all of this?

Ah well, this thread is about Black Ops so I shan't derail it further.

[TehKiller]

in MW2 FP animations were great but coincidentally (and ironically) they've set the standard for the worst 3P animations in any FPS after 2004.